This invention relates to emergency evacuation equipment for aircraft, in particular, to inflatable aircraft evacuation slides.
The requirement for reliably evacuating airline passengers in the event of an emergency is well known. Emergencies at take-off and landing often demand swift removal of passengers from the aircraft because of the potential for injuries from fire, explosion, or sinking in water. A conventional method of quickly evacuating a large number of passengers from an aircraft is to provide multiple emergency exits, each of which is equipped with an inflatable evacuation slide. These inflatable slides are normally stored in an uninflated condition in a container or packboard requiring a minimum of space in the interior of the aircraft. Door exit inflatable slides are typically either mounted on the interior of the aircraft door or immediately adjacent thereto. Overwing exits are normally stored in an uninflated condition in a special compartment that opens to the exterior of the aircraft adjacent the overwing exit. The packboard compartment is closed by means of a cover panel that fits flush with and blends smoothly into the contours of the aircraft exterior. The cover panel is retained to the packboard compartment by means of a plurality of releasable latches. Opening of the aircraft emergency evacuation exit in the armed condition releases the releasable latches allowing the cover panel to fall away. Simultaneously, the emergency evacuation slide is inflated and extends to its deployed condition ready for evacuation of passengers.
The releasable latches that secure the cover panel must be sufficiently robust to hold the cover panel in place through numerous takeoff and landing cycles in all types of weather yet must function reliably to release the cover panel in spite of ice, snow, dust or other contaminants. Failure of a releasable latch to release when activated can cause damage to the inflatable slide and/or slide compartment and even delay deployment of the emergency evacuation slide. Accordingly, what is needed is a fail-safe releasable latch that releases the cover panel even in the event of a failure of the latch mechanism.